


Laurel and Wreathed

by MapleMooseMuffin



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers, Friends to Lovers, Hanahaki Disease, Multi, Mutual Pining, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Pre and Post Time Skip, Slow Burn, also coughing up petals which may be triggering for those triggered by vomit and related content, no beta we die like Glenn, nothing too descriptive but you know, some violence and blood/injury as we discuss the battlefield, warnings for Sylvain's general self loathing and self depreciation which comes up here and there, you know the drill
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:07:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24435601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MapleMooseMuffin/pseuds/MapleMooseMuffin
Summary: The first time Sylvain hears the term ‘hanahaki,’ he’s in the Garreg Mach library, talking literature with Ashe.“Come on,” he says again. “You really expect me to believe people sprout weeds in their throats just because they don’t get true love’s first kiss? If that were true half of Fódlan would be coughing up daisies over each other.”“It’s supposedly lost now – they say it was contagious, but that it started as a saints’ disease. They called it the Martyr’s Bloom."“So, what, the saints weren’t allowed to fall in love?” How relatable, the bitter side of him laughs. To be too important to be allowed feelings. And also ridiculous.Ashe shakes his head, then turns back to the curtain of rain. “They could love. But in the world the Goddess wanted, they were supposed to be loved back.”
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Ingrid Brandl Galatea, Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Ingrid Brandl Galatea/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Ingrid Brandl Galatea/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Others mentioned
Comments: 10
Kudos: 44





	1. Sow the Seeds

**Author's Note:**

> Hello friends!
> 
> I'm absolutely in love with this trio, and recently I've fallen for the angst of hanahaki, so it was inevitable this fic would come to be. I'm expecting updates to come roughly twice a month, but we'll have to see how life pans out.
> 
> For now, have some in-world fanfiction, Sylvain's queer awakening, the moment Sylvain realizes Ingrid is a girl, and a war on the horizon. 
> 
> Enjoy~

The first time Sylvain hears the term ‘hanahaki,’ he’s in the Garreg Mach library, talking literature with Ashe. They’ve been trading recommendations back and forth as the year has rolled on, and it just so happens that Ashe has dug up another one he thinks Sylvain will enjoy.

The book is thick, leather bound with scrolling vines and flowers carefully set into the dark surface. Faded gold leaf detailing in the petals matches the shining bold print of the title.

“ _The Martyr’s Bouquet_ ,” Sylvain reads aloud.

Curious, he turns the cover and flips through a few pages of tight, even print. Not handwritten, then. That makes it a fairly new tale, something in the last two centuries. No author though. Interesting.

“Sounds like a tragedy,” he says with a grin.

Ashe nods, eyes earnest and arms full of other books he’s harvested from the library shelves. Sylvain doesn’t need to read the titles to know they’re all legends or historical fiction. The Martyr’s Bouquet is surely some knight tale as well. But Ashe does have a keen eye for narrative and a good intuition for stories his friends would enjoy, so Sylvain is more than willing to give this one a go.

“It is, well for the most part. It’s a romance, you see – and unrequited one. Or so it appears. I don’t want to spoil too much, but the main characters are very much victims of circumstance, a little like that play you and Dorothea both recommended to me.”

Ashe’s smile brightens the library as much as the candles Tomas keeps a careful eye on, and Sylvain can’t help feeling a warm fondness for the kid. It’s easy to guess what stories would resonate well with Ashe, earnest and open as he is, but seeing the results still makes Sylvain feel proud and affectionate. Just a handful of months into the school year, and they’re already fast friends.

Ashe continues gushing about the new novel. “I never thought about how well the war for the Leicester Alliance’s freedom would serve as a setting for a romantic tragedy like this, but really it’s almost perfect. And then add in the hanahaki disease…” He sighs wistfully, cheeks tinting pink as they so easily do with his pale complexion.

The unknown word catches Sylvain’s ear. “Hanahaki?” He wouldn’t exactly consider himself an expert in medicine – and honestly who can pay attention during Manuela’s lectures when she comes to class wearing _that_? – but he’s fairly sure he’s never heard of this one. “An old plague?” he guesses. “Like the one that tore up Faerghus before Lady Cornelia came?”

Ashe blinks, pulling back a little in surprise. “Oh, you haven’t read about it before?” He shakes his head. “It’s older than that. Hanahaki is an ancient disease. It turns up all the time in legends and knightly stories, though.” He brings a hand to his chin and frowns, putting a little furrow in his brow and mumbling, “that’s probably because of the rumors that Kyphon had it, for Loog. No historical basis there, of course, but, well, it would make their’s the greatest tragic romance in Fódlan history. Certainly in Faerghus’s.”

By now Sylvain knows enough to tell when Ashe has gotten himself off on a tangent and forgotten anyone else is even there. So instead of listening, he opens the book back up and skims the first page. It’s compelling, if a little outdated in tone, and grim in a way that Sylvain likes to indulge when he’s not entertaining the masses. All in all, a good pick on Ashe’s part.

“So this hanahaki,” Sylvain says, drawing Ashe out of a ramble on the historical debates over Kyphon and Loog’s relationship, “it has something to do with flowers?” He taps the leather inlays on the cover.

Ashe breaks off whatever he was saying about the great king’s coronation and nods. “It does. It’s really poetic, actually. That’s why I’m surprised you don’t know about it. But if this is your first time, I think it’s best if you find out by reading.”

And, well, Sylvain’s hiding out in the library because his date for the night met up with his date from last night, and it’s not as if he’s about to do homework while hiding from a few angry girls. Settling in to read a romantic tragedy seems fitting enough.

He’s a good quarter of the way through when Ashe’s head slips from his palm and hits the desk. They both jump, Sylvain startled out of his reading and Ashe jolting awake with a bump on his forehead and a sheepish look in his eyes.

Sylvain offers him an easy smile, soft and playful. “Maybe it’s time we get out of here. Ingrid’ll tear into us tomorrow if she finds out we’ve been up all night anyway.”

It earns him a low chuckle and a conceding nod. “I suppose you’re right. Although, I would say she’d be a lot less harsh on you if she learned you were up late reading, and not skulking around town chasing after farmgirls.”

Sylvain gives a loose shrug and watches Ashe shuffle together his massive stack of books.

“I think I’m doing us all a service by letting her chew me out instead of someone else. Besides, I have a reputation to uphold.”

“A _dis_ reputable one, you mean.” Ashe doesn’t sound very impressed. “I think you’d find it easier to enjoy the company of a nice girl if she knew you liked to read poetry and plays in your spare time. And if you weren’t always looking over your shoulder for an angry lover.”

Hearing that is practically a cue for one of his scorned lovers to burst in shouting, but thankfully the hour is late and there’s a storm brewing outside. Everyone with common sense is tucked away in their dorms.

Still, Ashe is frowning at him now, something tight lipped and disapproving. So Sylvain does what he always does in the face of disapproval – he changes the subject.

“I have to say I did enjoy myself tonight.” He lifts the book while Ashe stands and scoops his heavy pile into his arms. “An excellent recommendation once again from our heroic expert.”

Ashe shifts his weight, visibly torn between wanting to press the issue and wanting to talk about literature. In the end, his love of knights wins out as per usual.

“Well I’m glad you like it. I know you read fast, so you must have gotten to the part with the cliff by now, right?”

Sylvain nods. “With the roses? Yeah. A little too on the nose for symbolism, I think, but an interesting idea. A disease that grows flowers in your lungs until your love interest confesses… it’s a good way to put the longing into a tangible form, at least.”

Sylvain stands as well, offering to share some of the load by taking a few books off of the pile as they walk together down the hall. Outside, thunder rumbles low and far off. The halls are well lit by mounted candles, but the only other sounds in the building are the echoes of their steps on the flagstone and the occasional hoot of a messenger owl as they pass.

“They say the bloom changes to reflect your lover, or how you see them. The author probably chose roses to note their love as pure and full.”

“So what flowers do they say Kyphon coughed up for Loog?” Sylvain flashes a wry grin. They step out of the stairwell and turn left to see the rain has already started, coming down in a thick sheet and leaving the stone paths slick and shining.

Ashe hesitates at the edge of the corridor leading outside. His mouth twists in a tiny, pensive frown. Wondering how they’ll bring these books safely back to the dorms, no doubt.

“They don’t,” he says distantly. Then, blinking and turning back to Sylvain, he speaks clearer. “We don’t know – the only accounts we have are speculation at best, and they all just say petals, if anything.”

Sylvain snorts and tosses his head, shaking his bangs from his eyes. “C’mon, Ashe. You and I both know there are hundreds of _detailed_ ,” – he wags his eyebrows just to watch the way it makes Ashe blush – “accounts of our greatest king and his closest companion. You’re telling me not one of them goes into what color petals Kyphon coughed up at Loog’s coronation?”

Ashe shifts his books from one crook of the elbow to the other and avoids Sylvain’s eyes. “Well, sure,” he says with a hint of exasperation, “but as interesting as they are, those are historical fiction. Purely speculative works, written decades after their passing by bards who never met them.”

He does not deny knowing about the more explicit accounts of long dead royalty, Sylvain notes. He’ll file that one away for later.

For now he cocks his head and asks, “Isn’t it all fiction? I mean, I highly doubt the actual Kyphon was coughing up actual flower petals over his suppressed feelings for the king.”

“Kyphon, no,” Ashe shakes his head. His blush fades and he finds it easier to meet Sylvain’s eyes again. “Or really, we don’t know. But hanahaki is real.”

Sylvain refuses to believe that. “Come on,” he says again. “You really expect me to believe people sprout weeds in their throats just because they don’t get true love’s first kiss? If that were true half of Fódlan would be coughing up daisies over each other.”

Daisies. That’s pretty funny. He snickers at his own joke and waits for Ashe to break and snort along with him.

Instead, Ashe shifts his weight again, eyes big and earnest. “It’s supposedly lost now – they say it was contagious, but that it started as a saints’ disease. They called it the Martyr’s Bloom. That’s where the title came from.” He tilts his head to indicate the book at the bottom of Sylvain’s stack.

“So, what, the saints weren’t allowed to fall in love?” How relatable, the bitter side of him laughs. To be too important to be allowed feelings. And also ridiculous.

Ashe shakes his head, then turns back to the curtain of rain. “They could love. But in the world the Goddess wanted, they were supposed to be loved back.”

The saints and the strange afflictions their Goddess ‘blessed’ them with have little bearing on Sylvain’s time at Garreg Mach after _The Martyr’s Bouquet_. The Church and her knights preach of course, on monthly missions and in the training grounds, but they’re easy enough to avoid. Meanwhile the Blue Lion House’s professor seems to have managed to grow up outside of the Church’s influence, and she focuses much more on practical education, like lance work, horsemanship, and making Felix take dance lessons. The last of which will have Sylvain forever in her debt, even if Felix narrowly misses skewering Sylvain for laughing the next time they spar together.

Better still is the look on Felix’s face when he _wins_ the White Herron Cup and Manuela presents him with his hard earned dancer’s outfit.

(Sylvain sees him wear it exactly once, the product of the heroic wheedling and outright begging of one Annette Fantine Dominic, who has Felix wrapped tighter around her finger than anyone thought possible.

The flowing layers of the intricate outfit flutter with every motion Felix makes as he runs through a short sword drill in the knight’s practice grounds, face pink with embarrassment and amber eyes burning into the training dummy straight ahead. The flex and bulge of his exposed arms hefting his sword with unparalleled grace leave their lasting impression on Sylvain and slip their way into his dreams for the next week.

Afterwards, Sylvain is left sitting upright in bed and mumbling out an apology to Glenn’s ghost, just in case he’d somehow know.

There’s a part of him that’s self-aware enough to ask if it can still be called a queer awakening if it happens in his sleep.)

Oddly enough, Sylvain doesn’t take a date to the ball. In truth, the prospect of sharing a promise at the Goddess Tower feels a little too close to the ever looming ball and chain that waits for him just beyond the cusp of graduation. That and, while Sylvain lives to disappoint, even he isn’t cruel enough to ask a lovestruck girl to the ball only to ditch her for the main event.

So instead he goes with Ingrid, offering to save her from the ever doting, if somewhat smothering, clutches of Dorothea, who has been on the prowl with eyeshadow palates and makeup brushes for nearly a month now and who is definitely foaming at the mouth for an opportunity to pounce on Ingrid and slather her in powder.

“We’ll get dinner together after class,” Sylvain proposes over lunch, “and head out early. That way Dorothea will still be getting ready, and won’t have the chance to corner you in the dorms.”

Ingrid squints at him, untrusting. Suspicious as to why Sylvain Jose Gautier is asking _her_ of all girls to accompany him to the most romantic event of the school year. Sylvain doesn’t know how to say, ‘Because I trust you not to try and corner me into wishing for an eternal happily ever after together at the Goddess Tower,’ without it sounding too earnest or opening up too much of the future-wrought anxiety he’s been repressing. What he does know is that offering Ingrid his dinner rolls for the next two weeks is enough to convince her he’s a risk worth taking.

There’s only a small beat of lingering suspicion between them before Ingrid takes the bait. And the bread off his plate.

“Deal. But don’t go around telling people I’m your date.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Mercedes, they learn, is craftier than she looks. He didn’t factor her into his plans while keeping Dorothea at bay. So, nothing can prepare him for the sight of Ingrid as she steps out of the stairwell by the greenhouse to meet him an hour before the rest of the student body will start heading over to the ballroom.

Ingrid’s hair is swept back, a neater braid than the one she usually throws together before saddling her horse for morning rides. It makes her look mature – not older, but more confident, even as she winces and wrings her hands when Sylvain stares a beat too long.

“I know it isn’t much like me,” she confesses. There’s the tiniest hint of pink on her teeth from biting her lip – lipstick. She’s wearing lipstick. And the reason her eyes are so big, lashes so long and dark as they brush shyly against her rosy cheeks – “but Mercedes was really quite insistent.”

“Makeup,” he manages. A suave charmer, master of masking emotions, one of the fakest men in all of Fódlan. Tripping over his tongue and running hot under the collar in the face of his best friend wearing just a little powder and cream.

“It’s too much, isn’t it?” She winces again.

Intrusively, Sylvain wonders how much is rouge on her cheeks and how much is the heat of embarrassment. If she’d by warm to the touch. Soft beneath the brush of his thumb—

“N-no! No you look—” – _perfect, beautiful, stunning, gorgeous, radiant –_ “fine.” He laughs, a reflex, just like the way he rubs at his neck and grins wide enough to hurt. He feels the stretch of it in his chest as well. “I was just surprised, that’s all. It’s not like you to get invested in…” How to say it without offending her?

Thankfully Ingrid has always been the more grounded and straightforward of the two of them. “Frivolous, girly things? And maintaining appearances – you’re right.” She smiles though, and it doesn’t look nearly as anxious as when she first came to him. “It isn’t something that I take much interest in. It’s not that I’m terribly opposed to the idea, though. Just a bit out of my depth, and not sure how to handle being the focus of someone’s artistic attention.”

Sylvain nods. Smiles and swallows. Tries to pull his mind back in working order, to tell himself this is Ingrid, his best friend, the same girl who chewed him out last week in the dining hall for making other girls cry. No amount of makeup can change the way she feels like his home.

“Well, comfortable of not, we better be careful Dorothea doesn’t see you.” He chuckles. Deflects. Always pressing down the things he doesn’t want to think about with jokes and side steps. “She’ll be all over you the moment she sees you dressed up.”

“Ah,” Ingrid sighs and shifts her weight. He doesn’t miss her glance over his shoulder, looking out for the songstress in question, no doubt. “Hopefully it won’t come to that.”

She doesn’t sound too sure. But it keeps her from pressing him as they walk side by side to the ball, so he doesn’t feel too bad.

That night is one of the final nights of peace Fódlan sees in over five years.

One night they’re dancing, the next students are hunted down by crest beasts on campus – monsters Byleth leads their class to slay. Sylvain’s hands grip bone white around his lance as he faces down a monster that looks just like Miklan in the final, desperate throes of his miserable life. The roar of the beast as it – they – it falls echoes through his head for hours after.

No one says anything to him after that battle, or as he beats a hasty retreat back to his room and locks himself in with the Lance of Ruin leaning in the corner.

One firm knock on his door a few hours later leads to an empty hallway and a tray of hot food brought up from the dining hall, and Sylvain sees it for what it is. Felix noticed.

Captain Jeralt dies. The professor takes a dip in another dimension and returns ethereal and holy. Sylvain, Ingrid, and Felix enter the Holy Tomb wielding heroes’ relics just in case, and the Flame Emperor makes them glad they brought them.

In the chaos of Lady Rhea barking orders and rogues clad in ominous armor raiding caskets, Sylvain doesn’t have time to think of ghosts. There isn’t much time to think of anything other than cutting down tomb raiders.

Chasing blindly lands him alone in a far corner of the tomb with one of the invaders, who’s desperately trying to pop open a casket. Crest stones, Lady Rhea said, but some of these boxes hold more _personal_ elements of Seiros’s fallen family. Saintly relics – not heroes’ relics like the Lance he thrusts into the brigand’s chest just as he triumphantly pries off the casket lid, but relics in the most holy sense. Preserved bones and flesh turned to dust, like the billowing cloud that bursts around Sylvain as his foe staggers back and falls limply to the ground. His blood pools beneath him, more dripping down the jagged edges of the Lance of Ruin and pooling over the Gautier crest stone until it glows crimson.

Sylvain coughs against the cloud of nebulous saintly remains and tugs the casket closed. There’s no time to think about what – or _who_ – he’s breathed in, though, with the roar of more crest beasts near the front of the tomb.

There won’t be much time to think of anything but death for months to come.


	2. Cold Snap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > Guilt isn’t new to Sylvain, but it’s always unpleasant to realize he hasn’t fully killed his conscience with meaningless debauchery and total disregard for his own wellbeing. The lingering tightness Ingrid placed in his lungs is buried under a heavy knot filling his throat. He clears his throat twice against it and coughs hard enough to wince.   
>  Still, it lingers.
> 
> Family bonding, news from the front, loyalties, the first signs, and three little words 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends~
> 
> Boy, 2020 sure is a thing that's happening. I said I'd update regularly but here we are. If you're still around, thanks for coming back! I'm not gonna promise frequent updates anymore but I am still working on this piece.
> 
> So, here's 9k to make up for it?
> 
> Enjoy!~

The first few months of the war are somehow the quietest months of Sylvian’s life. It’s as though the air itself is holding its breath, the world standing stock still for all the tension it carries. Gautier Manor, once bustling with the sounds of Sylvain, Ingrid, Dimitri, and Felix scampering through the halls with wooden swords or the pounding beats of Sylvain’s boots as he rushed to find a hiding place away from an older, stronger brother, now barely hums. The long, cold, marble floored halls are hollow and empty. Only echoes of the occasional maid walking past. A dead thing kept preserved, mummified and presentable.

It’s jarring, after a year spent living in close quarters with his closest friends, surrounded by light and life. Their absence makes the north that much colder.

Every now and then the pulse picks up for a brief moment. Messengers arrive almost weekly. But each royal seal and classified report is whisked away to the Margrave’s office the moment the horse is dismounted, and the riders have barely enough time to eat a meal by the dining room hearth before they’re off again. The staff bustles to welcome them, rushes to tend to them, then quickly sees them off the same way they came. Sweeping stillness claims Gautier again.

Sometimes Sylvain is in the stables when a worn out courier trots in on her exhausted horse. The messengers slid off their mounts at the front courtyard long before getting to him, but Sylvain makes it a point to meet the groom at the stable door and take the reigns for himself. There’s a comforting haze to the work of it. Hauling hay and undoing leather straps, brushing out tangled manes and tending tired hooves. It lets his mind go quiet without inviting in the dark cacophony of thoughts that prey on him when idle. In the stables there is no anxiety, the sense of choking on expectation left at the door. It’s easier to breathe amidst the horses, especially when he has something to keep his hands busy. Makes him feel useful.

That illusion fades with the silhouette of the riders crossing the horizon when they head back, and Sylvain is left to pace the halls and smile at servants.

There’s a war on the other side of the country. Friends across the whole of it, whom he struggles to find the energy to write. He could choose to join them on the battlefield, take up the Lance of Ruin and let it live up to its name. His father wants him to prove Gautier’s strength. But his mother wants him here, near her. Every time Sylvain wraps his hand around the Lance of Ruin, he can’t bear the thought of taking away her last son.

“Have you thought any more on your future engagement?” the Margravine asks, as she does every day when they take tea together. Her private sitting room is decorated in the rich tones of Gautier green, accented by snow white detailing that makes the room feel like a winter’s evergreen dappled in snow. Crisp and cold.

It reminds Sylvain in some ways of the piney tea Felix prefers, but thinking on it too much makes his throat feel tight and his chest ache with loneliness.

Felix hasn’t written him either, though that more or less meets expectations. Words were never his strong suit.

At his mother’s routine question, Sylvain smiles around a quiet sip of his own tea – Bergamot, perfectly stepped and sweetened, a shared favorite between him and his mother.

“Well, I can’t risk giving the Gautier crest away to just anyone.” Just a hint of laughter in the end, lighthearted and charming. Playing his part as charismatic son, well-groomed heir.

Lady Gautier purses her lips, sharp brown eyes he and Miklan both inherited piercing through him. No doubt she hears the sarcasm he’s just barely bitten back. She won’t call him out directly for it, though. That’s something Sylvain both fears and admires about his mother – her way of weaving through a conversation to get what she wants.

“I appreciate your prudence,” she says kindly. Sylvain knows by now to guard himself against compliments like this. “You know your role as the only son of House Gautier isn’t something to be taken lightly, of course. But darling, don’t be so selective as to miss out on your prime.”

She sips her tea, delicate brows pinched together and gaze fixed on her saucer on the dainty table between them. The veiled meaning is clear.

Sylvain’s heard all his life about how he was born late, past the point when they thought she could no longer bear children. A miracle child. Gauiter’s saving grace.

It’s a subtle reminder to be grateful to her, to be glad he’s even here in the first place. And a reminder that he has a duty to fulfil in return. ‘You were born for a reason,’ she doesn’t have to say, ‘so hurry up and make more heirs like you were meant to.’

There’s always that temptation in him to suggest maybe he ought not to have been born, then. That he was the universe’s accident, not the Goddess’s gift to House Gautier. But he remembers the night Miklan was formally disowned, after the servants had cleared away their evening meal and his mother sequestered herself alone in her rooms without a word. The thick oak door of this chamber muffled most of the sound, but the faintest squeaks of her private sobbing still linger with him.

It would be easier if she were cold to her core. If he could believe the winter winds of Gautier froze her solid after so many years married to its master. But in little glimpses and accidental moments, he’s seen behind the mask, and he knows how much she loves him.

So he deflects. Makes promises he’ll fail to keep and asks her about the messengers that come.

“Your father is handling it all perfectly fine, darling,” she says with a tight smile. “No sense worrying yourself over the finer details just yet.”

That’s a point of contention between them, if the hard light of her eyes is anything to go by. She raises her tea cup delicately and sips through that thin smile, making it seem more like a grimace than anything pleasant. Sylvain wonders how long they’ve been arguing over it. His mother has never hidden her distaste for the ‘common’ life of a soldier, quick to point out the filth and grime of a life of fighting. It isn’t that she opposes war, of course. Duty and honor are significant elements of prestige and a noble upbringing. But she’d much rather have Sylvain appointed a high position among the ranks by virtue of his birth, rather than watch him ‘debase’ himself by working through those ranks alongside the lowborn soldiers he’d eventually lead.

The margrave is a man of more integrity than his cunning wife. That Sylvain’s primary battle experience came during his belated year at the officer’s academy, whilst both Fraldarius heirs and the crown prince were all war forged by the age of 15, is a burning embarrassment in his eyes. If he’d had his way, Sylvain would have worked his way up through the Gautier troops starting as a squire in the Srengi conflicts a few years before.

With as terse as his mother is being about these messengers, Sylvain can safely assume the war is getting worse and his father is chomping at the bit for an opportunity to have his son prove his worth. Lucky Sylvain that his mother holds those reigns.

Or so he’d thought.

The next messenger to crest the hills that shelter Gautier Manor comes not by horse but by pegasus, brilliant white wings beating against the soft powder of an early autumn snow dusting. The rider is easy to spot against the gentle swirl of snow, with her bright teal-green uniform and a whipping riding braid beating in the wind. When she lands just outside the courtyard it is with all the poise of a royal knight. Standing at the top of the steps leading into the manor, Sylvain gets his first glimpse of Ingrid in six months.

She slides off her pegasus stiffly, a little frozen in the thighs from the long flight through icy skies. Sylvain makes his way across the courtyard while she stamps out her legs and gratefully passes off the reins to a Gautier groom. The pegasus, Egil, snorts and leans into the gentle pats Ingrid offers as thanks before he’s led away to a warm stall and fresh hay. Then they’re alone.

Ingrid takes three bold steps forward and wraps her arms around Sylvain, hugging him strong and tight. The warmth of her body blends with his affections and heats him to the core. He tries to pour it back into her, wrapping his arms around her slender shoulders as tight as he can. Feeling her, here and present and real again, like she’d stopped existing when they parted ways after the fall of Garreg Mach. Having her here now is grounding.

And if it’s strange for him to dip his head and press a wide grin to the top of her head, she doesn’t protest.

Ingrid hums when she finally loosens her grip and pulls back.

“Sylvain.”

He can hear how tired she is even as she smiles up at him, brushing overgrown bangs out of her eyes.

“I missed you,” stumbles out of his mouth before he can catch it. A little more earnest than he’s been in months, what with dancing around his mother’s prodding and his father’s stern expectations. His anxious instinct is to pull back from it and put the familiar masks back on. Stick with what he knows and what he’s gotten used to up here. But the way Ingrid smiles and gives his arm a little squeeze in sympathy makes something tighten and shift in his chest. Like he’s swallowed a spark of lightning. It’s not wholly unpleasant.

“I missed you too,” she says with soft eyes. “But I’m afraid I didn’t come all this way just for a visit. I have news from the front.”

_The front._ Hearing it called that makes it feel so much more real. Less like there’s a war somewhere off in the distance and more like it could reach them, even up here at the tip of the continent.

The little mouthful of lightning lingers, tingling in his lungs.

“I’ll walk with you,” he says. Nods to the big pine doors of the manor. Watches the soldier-straight set of her shoulders, the tangled braid snaking down her back as she passes.

She looks worn through, but she moves with purpose and confidence. She’s been in Gautier before, tagged along with Glenn during a few Fraldarius visits, but those happy days feel so far off Sylvain is surprised she doesn’t need directions to his father’s study.

At the end of the entrance hall Ingrid takes the right staircase without prompting and half turns on the first landing, pausing to let him fall into stride beside her.

“Where on the front are you coming from?” he asks.

“Gaspard.” The ghost of a smile brushes her lips, avoids her eyes. “Ashe sends his regards.”

Sylvain digs up one of his wider smiles. “I’ll send mine back. Glad to hear he’s doing alright. That means you two were fighting together, right? I’ll bet the whole of southern Faerghus feels safer in your hands.”

His compliment rings in the air, settling heavy without a response. Everything settles heavy in quiet air these days – even silence has a weight to it. One of the many war time skills he’s started to hone is picking apart the differences in every heavy sound and figuring out what’s wrong this time.

He looks at Ingrid – _really looks_ at her. Soldier stance. Frizzing braid. Hard green eyes and a knotted brow. She’s going to have a permanent furrow there by the time the war ends. If it ends. If she makes it.

There’s another new skill he’s honing. Looking death in the face and ignoring it.

They step into the north wing. As she turns, Sylvain sees the familiar pursed little frown Ingrid first found at age 14, when she peeled herself out of her chambers for the first time in months and came to lecture him for wasting his time lounging about, rather than training.

(He’d been waiting for her.)

She wears that frown whenever Felix talks about Glenn, the rare times they drag it out of him. When he scoffs at the idea of a knight’s duty, spits in the face of blind honor and turns up his nose at noble responsibility.

Glenn. Her father. Duty and knighthood and crest bearing. Sylvain starts to see the pieces and how they all align.

Ingrid’s silence is the held breath of a swallowed scream still burning in the lungs. Pounding in the ears and too big for the space containing it. It’s not anger only because Ingrid doesn’t let herself get angry with her father. It isn’t frustration because it means too much to her to be so trivial. Her sharp green eyes, keen enough to pick friend from foe fifty feet in the air, lock hard ahead, her gloved hands curl around the ghosts of weapons at her bare belt.

That’s strange. She isn’t dressed for combat. No one carries a sword with them at all waking hours (Felix not withstanding), but if she came straight here from Gaspard, she should be armed and ready.

They sent a crested heir away from the front to deliver a simple message, while her hero’s relic collects dust in a starving dukedom.

“You weren’t fighting,” he says. Not a question, not an accusation. Just a quiet, sympathetic mumble.

The way Ingrid clears her throat after he says it is a clear enough answer. But she’s thorough in all forms of the word, so she nods and tightens her frown and her fists.

“Galatea is small and on the border of the Kingdom.” She speaks in measured breaths. Reciting. For half a heartbeat Sylvain sees her standing at an academy desk, listing off siege tactics to a mercenary turned tutor. Turned earth and lost bones, now.

“We’re in a fragile position. My father fears our territory will be the gateway to the capital for the Empire. He’s stockpiling anything we can spare to bargain political favor and manpower from the other territories. And… blessed as I am with a crest, my hand is our greatest bargaining chip.”

She says it so simply. Resigned already. Accepting a prescribed fate.

Sylvain has never figured out how she swallows it down like that. The breeding and grooming, the helplessness painted as duty and noble privilege. To be told her destiny is to be swollen with crest babies and sold for cheap grain, and not feel the vague urge to wander off in a Faerghus blizzard and see what good that precious noble blood does her then.

Maybe that’s just him.

Still.

“If he’s so worried about an attack he should be using you on the battlefield, not counting you in the coffers. Why not bring out Lúin to defend our borders and hold the line?”

Ahead, the plain pine door to the Margrave’s office looms, stern and spartan as the man behind it. Sylvain slows, stops, lingers. Takes a good hard look at Ingrid when she turns to face him.

She really is older now. A powerful passionate woman, being slowly starved of her dreams.

Something unnamed shifts in Sylvain’s chest, tight and itching near his lungs. He clears his throat against it as if that might clear his heart and head. But the feeling lingers.

“Gaspard is falling,” she says. The words at once too quiet and glass shatteringly loud. Sylvain feels as though his mind has stalled like a miscast spell, stuttering to catch up.

“The people lost Lord Lenato. Their only bloodline heir was murdered by the church. They don’t _trust_ each other, let alone an adopted boy with noble blood on his hands. Ashe is doing all he can, but the only words they hear are those of the Western Church. Soon there’s going to be a rebellion, and then Lúin won’t matter anymore. The Empire will take Gaspard by default.”

Her final words echo in the empty halls. In his ears. In his tightening chest, swimming alongside nausea rising.

He still imagines Ashe as a doe eye’d boy, pale and quiet with a hunger to his face he never fully outgrew. Eagerness, easy friendship. Even his letters have carried a bright and welcoming tone.

Letters Sylvain hasn’t answered, even now. So quick to retreat into the isolation of this northmost prison. As if eager to bury the last memories of peace and genuine happiness shared before this hell broke loose.

Does Ingrid look at him and see resignation, too?

Guilt isn’t new to Sylvain, but it’s always unpleasant to realize he hasn’t fully killed his conscience with meaningless debauchery and total disregard for his own wellbeing. The lingering tightness Ingrid placed in his lungs is buried under a heavy knot filling his throat. He clears his throat twice against it and coughs hard enough to wince.

Still, it lingers.

“What about his siblings?” The precious brother and sister Ashe worked so hard to protect. Names and faces he can now put to the stakes, to quantify the danger of the war.

“They’ve already been sent ahead to Fhirdiad. After Gaspard falls, Ashe will join the knights there and prepare the capital for the southern assault.”

“What about you?”

Ingrid turns to face the office door and takes a deep breath. “That depends on how this conversation goes.”

She barely hesitates then. Just long enough to breathe out all the air she pulled in and square her shoulders.

In the echoing wake of the closing door, Sylvain rubs at the tightness in his chest and coughs again.

Pegasi are kept in larger stables than the standard war horses and messenger mounts. Gautier Manor only has space for one visiting pegasus at a time in the main stable. But even if there were a hundred pegasi, Sylvain would have no trouble finding Ingrid’s steed.

He busies himself the only way he knows how while messengers speak with his father; by leaning against the spacious stall’s swinging gate and watching Ingrid’s mount, Egil, preen and pace, stretching sore and tired wings. The grooms freed him from his riding armor already, laying all the tack, metal and leather out amidst Gautier saddles and the dark armor Sylvain commissioned for his own horse.

Pegasus knights train for speed and mobility, mastering the art of dropping down fifty feet to spear a foe and then kicking off above the field before his battalion realizes what’s happened. Where paladins lead the charge and cut a path through the swaths of enemy lines, pegasus knights watch from on high for the perfect place to strike. The only armor worth their while are the light weight joint guards and helms designed to deflect arrows shot at their mounts’ eyes and wings.

Lined up beside the 50 pounds of jagged black ridged dark knight armor fitted for Sylvain’s bay mare, Egil’s thin silver helm and riveted neckguard seem so small and lacking.

A low nicker and snort turns Sylvain back to the white stallion. His head is buried in the crook of a wing, fussing restlessly over spread feathers. Back at the officer’s academy they’d learned all the finer pints of husbandry and biology on Saturdays spent helping the patrol. Sylvain remembers that pagasi have a natural oil to their feathers to keep the ice away when flying through Faerghus storms – mostly he remembers wondering if said oil ever stained riders’ trousers or, more nervously, made the saddles less secure. Now he wonders if there aren’t other uses for that oil.

Halfway through the Horsebow Moon, the blizzards are only a held breath away from descending on Faerghus. If – _when_ – _when_ Gaspard falls, the Empire will be pushing an offense up into colder and colder regions to reach Fhirdiad. What if the Kingdom soldiers, already bred in snow and ice, were as immune to the biting frost as their flying mounts?

Egil draws his head out from under his wing and huffs a heavy breath, sending a pair of bent feathers fluttering across the stall. The wooden gate creaks under Sylvain’s grip and weight, boots scuffing the cold packed earth of the stable floor when he leans bodily over to catch the feathers in gloved hand.

They’re small feathers, comparatively; about the size of a paring knife each, with splintering shafts. No good for turning into quills and unremarkable in their plane pale color. Still, some strange compulsion wells in Sylvain’s chest, urging him to tug open the silk pouch on his belt and squirrel away the discarded scraps of wing.

“What do you think?” he asks Egil. “Got any oil to spare?”

“I hope you aren’t seriously trying to seduce my steed, Sylvain.”

Sylvain turns to meet Ingrid’s playfully stern look as she passes the other stalls to stand at his side. There are snowflakes cluttered in her hair and a little puff of steamed breath at her lips. The snow must must have picked up since he left her to his father.

He watches a melting flake drip off her crossed arms, spots another tiny one glitter in her curling lashes. Tight ache and subtle burn bloom again between his ribs.

Sylvain cocks his head to the side and presses a splayed hand against the pain, giving a mock gasp for effect. “You wound me, Ingrid! As if my heart could ever be swayed away from my darling Manette.”

The horse in question tosses her head a few stalls down and snorts, restless with the smell of ice on the air.

Ingrid raises both brows and tilts her head too, as if peering down her nose at him despite the difference in their heights. It brings up the memory of an old tutor Sylvain drove to resignation with the sheer force of his personality alone.

“You? Be unfaithful? You’re right, that’s as likely as a dry winter in Fraldarius.”

“Oh-kay,” Sylvain laughs, insides twisting. Drops his arm, brings the other hand to hip. “Ouch. I take it your talk with my father didn’t go too well.”

Ingrid’s shoulders swell with a deep pull of air; when they sag on the exhale she’s left looking smaller, more like the teenager she is. She shifts her feet. The soft sound of firm leather scraping hard ground echoes in the small space. Her eyes are fixed on Egil as she speaks.

“Not so much, no. I’m sorry Sylvain. I didn’t mean to be so harsh.”

He shrugs and leans against the gate again, trying to catch her eye. He wins a side glance and pays for it with an inviting little smile.

“Hey, no harm done. It’s not like you’re wrong. I’ve worked pretty hard at being a bastard, right?”

She’s supposed to smile, or frown even, lecture him. Instead she turns her head and fixes him with wide, wounded eyes and a little furrow between her brows. As if _he’s_ insulted _her_.

Sylvain straightens to cover surprise and laughs, errant hand burying its way in his hair.

“No harm done, alright? Now come on and tell me what you came here for. You didn’t fly all the way from Gaspard just to tell us the war news, did you?”

Ingrid lingers on it, parting her lips and running her tongue over the bottom one, searching for words. Sylvain struggles not to stare. He coughs against the tension in his chest and winces when that makes it worse.

“Are you alright?” Ingrid leans into his space and catches him by the shoulder. Her heavy braid slides off her shoulder and thumps against the stall gate twice. Sylvain clears his throat and rubs at his chest, willing the ache to fade. It takes a few beats to settle down into a manageable burn.

He sighs, then smiles for the both of them. “Yeah, yeah I’m fine.” The croak to his voice is hardly reassuring. He swallows again and makes another try of it. “Probably just ate something bad, or swallowed tea the wrong way.”

Ingrid gives him a skeptical look. “If you aren’t feeling well, you’d better not stay out here in the stables. You’ll end up with a full blown cold.”

“Then let’s head in. We can take tea in my quarters and you can catch me up on whatever you’ve been up to.” Come to think of it, Sylvain never did send any of the letters he started to her. Nor Felix, though he’s far less likely to have gotten a reply from him.

Ingrid shifts her weight, pulling back and letting her hand drop from his shoulder. Sylvain’s stomach sinks with it.

“I shouldn’t,” she says like an apology.

Sylvain offers, pleads, “You could.”

“I _can’t_.”

Egil nickers and shifts in his stall, coming to lean over the gate and snuffle through Ingrid’s hair like he’s preening her now. Sylvain watches her toy with the hems of her sleeves and reach up to pat against his neck and a sort of familiar helplessness settles in his stomach. He knows there’s nothing in the world that can change Ingrid’s mind once she’s made it. If she put that stubbornness and determination to work when her father was picking out suitors and chaining her to simple patrol routes, she’d be a royal knight ten times over.

Instead she’s here, finger combing Egil’s mane in preparation to saddle back up and return to her father’s beck and call.

Sylvain grips the stall door in both hands, then leans in to rest his forearms across the top.

“Galatea will still be there in the morning,” he murmurs. Remembers the war and wonders if that’s true. Thinks of Gaspard and feels like an asshole.

Ingrid fixes him with a hard look that says she thinks him one, too. Her eyes have always been so big and full of fire, always made Sylvain feel smaller in the presence of her anger. Made worse by the fact that she’s usually right – Goddess forbid they ever say that out loud.

“I have to report back and tell my father not to expect any military support from Gautier.” Her tone is the same she uses when talking about the responsibilities of knights or the duty of nobles. A little haughty, plenty righteous. Disappointed in the failing of others to maintain some modicum of human decency.

It’s one thing for her father to keep her close. If he’s honest with himself, his mother has been doing the same for Sylvain. But no one requests military support from House Gautier unless they need it. His father’s love of lording the Gautier armies over others sees to that.

“What’s wrong in Galatea?” other than the usual droughts and tension. “You said Gaspard was falling, not the east.”

“It is.” Ingrid tells Egil, stroking his muzzle. “But we lie directly between the Alliance and Fhirdiad. I told you my father is afraid.”

“Is the Alliance taking up arms against us now?”

“It doesn’t have to be the Alliance to come from the Alliance.”

Ingrid turns and meets his eyes across Egil’s nose. Her hands still against the pegasus’s face, just holding him. Whether it’s for his comfort or hers, Sylvain can’t guess.

“The Alliance is in turmoil,” she says. “They’re doing their best to keep it under control, but so many leaders around the table is hard enough to manage in times of peace. From the snippets we catch on the wind from Daphnel, it wouldn’t be hard for Edelgard to find an opening to take advantage of. Just like with Gaspard.”

Edelgard _is_ cunning. Hadn’t she already proven that in the Holy Mausoleum? Sylvain twists his face, glaring at the memory of her standing, practically swimming in the Flame Emperor’s armor, a cracked mask at her feet and an air of calm around her. Prince Dimitri’s frantic roar still echoes in his mind.

“She’s crafty enough to try something like that,” he sighs and nods.

“Fraldarius thinks she’ll go for the historical imagery and aim for a victory in the Tailtean Plains.”

Sylvain cocks a brow. “Felix or Lord Rodrigue?”

Ingrid mirrors him. “Do you really think Felix blends poetry with his battle strategies?”

“Fair enough. Did he get in a fight with his father over that, then?”

She shakes her head and finally drops her arms from Egil’s face. The pegasus sighs and takes interest in his feed instead.

“He’s already fighting. Probably for the best – I can’t imagine he and Lord Rodrigue have been getting along as of late, with how different their world views are. It seems like the only way Felix can settle an argument is with a sword in his hands.”

“Was he fighting in Gaspard, then?”

“Briefly. His battalion was moving to Magdred when I landed. We barely had time to share a meal before he set out.”

“A meal and a sparring match.”

Sylvain pictures Felix, messy hair, probably grown out by now and dragged up in a tangled ponytail, one sword at his hip and another in his hand, pointed straight at Ingrid in challenge before she’s even dismounted. She probably smiled for the first time in days at that, and Felix must have scowled, so serious it’s almost petulant.

Sylvain misses him profoundly.

His chest burns with the ache.

“That goes without saying,” Ingrid nods. “We didn’t get many words in that way, though. He’s even more relentless than before, if you can believe it. I truly think he’s reached the point of being unparalleled.”

“That goes without saying,” Sylvian grins. Ingrid snorts.

The wind picks up outside the stable. Wood creaks and snow flutters past the open doorway in a powdery blur. It’s more foreshadowing than a true concern – the first snows are never bad enough to make the ice-born Faerghus people shiver, really. And yet there’s still a selfish piece of Sylvain that wants the storm to swell up into an early blizzard thick enough to rival midwinter. Whatever it would take to ground Ingrid for one more night.

Did she feel the same way, sparring with Felix? Grip her lance a little tighter, work a little harder to hold her ground if only to drag the match out, to keep Felix’s focus? What difference would it make, if Felix made it to Magdred an hour or two later? If Ingrid stayed the night in Gautier?

“He tried to get me to go with him,” she says quietly. “To join the front lines in Magdred.”

Sylvain can see the thoughts churning in her mind, but he can’t guess at them. It’s too hard to say if the little pull of her lips is regret or resignation.

“Why didn’t you?” he asks just as lowly. Tilts his head to catch her gaze. She comes out of her thoughts quickly, shakes her head, keeps her eyes on his.

“I wouldn’t betray my father like that. Even though I dream of being a knight, and even though I know in my heart I should be fighting for my country… running off to the front isn’t the way to do it. Not when Galatea is at risk.”

“What about after? When Galatea either falls, or the battle moves on?”

“I… I don’t know,” Ingrid says. _Haven’t decided_ , Sylvain hears.

It’s only a matter of time before she makes up her mind and goes. Only a matter of time before Gaspard falls, only a matter of time before Sreng takes advantage of the war. They’re all running down the clocks until the decisions are made for them.

Ingrid clears her throat. “For now, I’ll head back to help my father and brothers guard Galatea. Lord Rodrigue did promise us the few troupes he could spare from his focus on the southern borders and Tailtean. Without any aide from Gautier, we’ll have to make due.”

She pushes off from the gate and straightens. Adjusts her riding gloves. The wind and the snow settle down again outside like an invitation. For her to leave; for him to say something that makes her stay.

_I’ll talk to my father._

 _I’ll come to Galatea – Edelgard’ll think twice before taking on Lúin_ and _the Lance of Ruin_.

_Let’s ask His Highness to make you a knight right now._

“Do you need any help saddling up?” he asks and straightens to join her. “The stable hands already saw to your armor.”

She smiles in a way that almost reaches her eyes. “Thank you, Sylvian. That would be a great help.”

Once outside, Sylvain turns to offer Ingrid a hand and help her mount, only to find her seated in the saddle and gripping the reigns.

“It was good to see you again,” she calls down to him. Egil shifts his feet and lifts his nose, checking the wind. “I was starting to worry you were already snowed in up here, as it seems none of your messengers have made it out.”

He laughs weakly and rubs at the back of his neck, smiling like a wince and an apology.

“Well you know how it is. Itha Plains are pretty big – messengers get lost all the time. I’ll uh, I’ll make sure I send my letters with more experienced messengers from now on.”

Ingrid prods Egil forward and lines them up with the gentle breeze rolling through the courtyard.

“You better. It was a long summer without your usual novellas to fill my spare time.”

“Alright, I hear you.” Sylvian takes a few steps back, giving Egil space to spread out his wings. “Can’t let my favorite lady get bored without me.”

“Save it for your mare. And do try to stay out of trouble. I can’t come up here to clean up the damage your wandering heart leaves behind.”

A fine pair of kitchen maids spring to mind immediately. He hides his grin behind Ingrid’s back.

“Goodbye, Ingrid. Fly safe.”

“Goodbye, Sylvain.”

With a snap of the reigns, Egil races forward, flapping his wings until the momentum is enough to carry them both up into the air.

Sylvain stays in the courtyard watching their joined form shrink smaller and smaller, until he can’t tell them apart from the oncoming snow. And then a little longer, quietly telling himself this meeting won’t be their last.

There’s a knock on Sylvain’s door just as he presses the wax seal on his first letter to Ingrid since her visit. He ignores it for the moment to check the seal is just right, then sets about tidying up his desk. The little sealing waxes are tucked into a drawer, the cup for melting and pouring checked for residue. Another knock, more insistent this time.

“Just a minute!”

The shift of an arm nearly sends his inkwell toppling; Sylvain darts forward and catches it at the edge of the table. He sighs, rights it, and corks it before carefully putting it back in its place.

A third knock, rapping and demanding, followed by a voice.

“The Margrave has summoned you, my lord.”

_Great_. Sylvain’s least favorite maid delivering his least favorite news.

“Thank you, Giselle,” he calls out and rolls his eyes. “I’ll be out in just a sec.”

She’ll be waiting, he knows. After six years – and two romps in the creaky bed of her servant’s quarters – she’s developed an irritating knack for reading him. Worse, she’s gained a reputation for it. Not the sex – if Sylvain’s mother knew he was nosing his way under the servants’ skirts she’d fire and replace the entire staff, and then where would he be? – but her knack for getting him to do as he’s told.

Incidentally, Giselle is his father’s favorite maid.

Sylvain huffs and takes a little longer than is strictly necessary organizing his desk. He tucks Ingrid’s letter into the breast of his jacket, pausing at the mirror to straighten his clothes and tidy his hair. Pretending it won’t fall right back into its natural disarray.

Giselle knocks again to tell him he’s stalled long enough. She’s still knocking when Sylvain opens the door. She takes a quick, neat step back to avoid getting hit, the click of her shoes on the marble floor echoing down the cold hall. Already she has a terse frown on her face.

“You’re looking lovely as ever.”

“As are you.”

Her expression doesn’t shift.

They stare each other down like that, wordless air between them. Distantly, Sylvain tries to remember why he ever wormed his way into her bed. It distracts from the silent scolding she gives him, and the uncomfortable thing that settles in his chest whenever he’s faced with a disapproval outside his control and creation.

“Did my father say what he wanted from me?” he asks once he gets restless with it.

Giselle takes a calm breath in. “No, my lord.” She isn’t cold with it, or sneering. Just crisp, matter of fact. The way she looks at him, the way she speaks, it’s all with the same air only his closest friends ever use. Familiar and intimate. Aware.

It’s Felix’s cutting words, Ingrid’s disappointment when he doesn’t apply himself. _I know what’s behind your smile. I’ve seen the ugly behind the curtain._

Sylvain hates Giselle.

He follows her to his father’s study.

She opens the door as soon as they arrive, not leaving him any time to stall or back out of it.

“The young lord is here to see you, your grace.”

“Come in.”

Sylvain runs his tongue along his bottom lip. Swallows. Takes a deep breath, and remembers his letter.

“Giselle.” She acknowledges him with a nod, looking up at him from under pretty lashes. Sylvain pulls out his letter and presents it. “See that this is sent with our fastest messenger.”

“Of course, my lord.” She takes the letter and curtsies. “Anything else I can do for you?”

“You’re dismissed,” the Margrave cuts in. Giselle nods to the room and takes her leave, abandoning Sylvain in the cold, empty doorway.

Out of excuses, Sylvain squares his shoulders and enters the office.

The Margrave’s office is filled by two chairs and a massive wooden desk, currently covered in letters, ordinances, requests, and, most likely, marriage offers. At the right, the Margrave has lain out a map of Fódlan, with wooden flags and colored tiles scattered to mark political and military positions.

“Sylvain.”

He gestures for him to step closer, and he does. The flags scattered around the map aren’t marked with the emblems of nations as Sylvain expected. Instead they’re crests. The territories that aren’t governed by crested nobles have simple colored chips set over them instead.

Stealing a glance to the south, Sylvain notes Gaspard is still blue. Their border with the Western Church is filled with red.

His father gestures to the other side of the map, just north of the spiraling crest of Gautier. Orange chips are lain out in a line just past the border in Sreng – several Srengi parties clustered on the edge of Fódlan.

“Border patrol’s sighted movement?” Sylvain asks. His father hums an affirmative and says nothing more.

There’s a weight of expectation in his father’s silence. He watches Sylvain closely, not commenting or indicating anything other than the piled up chips at their border. Waiting. Testing. Wanting to see what Sylvain will make of the situation first.

Sylvain’s pulse stutters over a beat, veins hot with a compulsion to please. Anxious at the chance of disappointing, no matter how regularly he works at doing just that. He leans over the map and scans the scene carefully. Galatea holding the eastern border, a swath of red to the south. No crest in Charon – the image of Lady Catherine cutting through the fog with her glowing Thunderbrand flashes in his mind’s eye. She’ll be focused on serving the Knights of Seiros rather than defending her old territory in the Kingdom. The single crest of Fraldarius in Galatea offers small comfort.

That leaves Prince Dimitri, who has to stay in Fhirdiad, and Annette.

Sylvain straightens and taps the table. “We can reach out to House Dominic. They don’t have a lot of forces, but they’re the only ones who don’t already have their hands tied. And as close as they are, we’ll receive aide quickly.”

The Margrave frowns. Sylvain feels it in his stomach.

“Dominic has a crested heir,” he says, like that means something. Sylvain struggles to find the relevance. He knows his father is obsessed with these things, but in that case, wouldn’t Annette’s crest make her a boon?

His father sighs at Sylvain’s questioning look. “There’s nothing for us to gain if we seek out aid from a stable house, boy. We are all worn thin by the war, but as the defenders of the north, Gautier cannot afford to weaken its reputation. No.”

He leans over the table and begins moving pieces around. First, the Fraldarius crest in Galatea. “Our bond with Fraldarius is well established, and as defenders of the throne and one of the northernmost territories, it’s only natural they’d aid us in holding our borders.”

He slides the flag up beside Gautier’s, then pulls both to the line of orange Srengi tiles.

“Won’t that leave the eastern border open to attack?” Sylvain protests.

The Margrave huffs. “The Alliance isn’t making any moves in this war. They’re too focused on balancing their councils. The eastern border can spare a unit of competent fighters who’d be put to better use here. And,” he taps the empty space in Charon, “we’ve an opportunity there once that unit joins our forces. One we wouldn’t get if we sought out Dominic.”

Sylvain looks from the blank space to the Dominic crest. Back at Galatea and its flag, then over to the pile of letters on the other side of the desk.

_Dominic has a crested heir._ But Charon…

“You’re sending aide to Charon, to give them a reason to feel indebted to us?”

The look on Ingrid’s face as she stood in the stables, rejected and abandoned. Sylvain can’t stand to imagine what she’ll look like when she hears Gautier’s sent aid to her neighbor instead.

The only reason his father even knows those territories are anxious right now is because Ingrid asked him for help. And he turned her down.

Sylvain grits his teeth and forces himself to speak calmly. “I thought you didn’t want to bother with the east,” he says over the hundreds of insults that swell in his brain.

“I’m not going to waste my time on fruitless ventures. Galatea is the very definition of fruitless, in that and many other regards.”

He turns away from the map and shuffles the papers on his desk, looking for something in the pile. Sylvain clenches his fists and digs his nails into his palms. Better to break skin than lose hie composure, than challenge his father’s authority over their troops. His muscles tremble with the urge to hit something.

The Margrave finds what he is looking for. A letter, Sylvian thinks, mostly finished, written in the signature emerald ink they use for formal correspondence.

“Charon has always turned out strong crests. After the fiasco with the coup plot,” – the insurrection that led to Catherine’s exile and Ashe’s older brother being murdered by the church – “what they need most is a reputation repair. You may be trying your damnedest to tarnish ours,” the Margrave fixes him with a hard glare. Sylvain’s clenched jaw creaks with a tight smile. “But a few alleged bastards roaming the countryside is still a better rumor than whispers of treason. And Charon’s lands have rich farmland to the south, good mining quarries in the north.” He smacks at the letter with the back of his hand, fluttering it in Sylvain’s direction. “Study up. Your philandering life is coming to an end.”

The words sink slowly, like silt in a river. The letter, Charon, his reputation against theirs. Crests. Heirs. An endless swathe of marriage proposals littering the Margrave’s desk.

A betrothal.

The room shudders around Sylvain, pulse thrumming in his ears. He braces one hand on the map, thumb and forefinger caging around the crest of Gloucester. Takes a shaky breath in. Cracks his jaw open to speak, and seizes with sudden tight pain in his throat.

The Margrave stands by watching attentively while Sylvain doubles over and hacks his lungs out. His eyes water with the effort, stomach clenching, nails digging into the desk to keep himself steady. It feels like it stretches on forever, a drawn out tension between them filled only by the harsh barks of air squeezed out of Sylvain’s chest. The burning in his lungs spreads up his airway, turning sharp and painful. Like something is caught in his throat, choking him.

“What’s wrong with you?” his father huffs. He thumps a heavy hand between Sylvain’s shoulder blades, which makes the sharp, cutting pain all that much worse. Sylvain wheezes and scrapes his nails across the pinewood of the desktop.

“You better not be getting sick.” An echo of Ingrid, but harsher this time. “I need you in Sreng – ideally with the Fraldarius boy. From what I hear, Rodrigue’s son has carved a name for himself in Imp blood. Between him and the Lance of Ruin, we’ll choke off this little invasion before it’s even begun.”

The pain finally gives way as something wet flings itself into Sylvain’s palm. He coughs a few more times to shake off the lingering feeling. Clears his throat and pulls in deep, long breaths. The cool autumn air in the office is both a relief and an overstimulation.

“There you are.” His father rubs once between his shoulders, then takes his hand back. Sylvain straightens and wipes his eyes.

“I’m-“ He croaks and coughs one last time, then tries again. “I’m fine. Sorry. Guess I just… breathed in dust or something.”

He wipes his wet hand off on a handkerchief. Something pointed catches in the cloth, small as a fingernail. Sylvain frowns.

“I’ve already drafted your proposal to the heir of Charon, as well as our aid request to Rodrigue. I’ve no doubt he’ll help us. That leaves it to you to sign this,” he lays the proposal letter on the desk in front of Sylvain, “and write his son. You two are still friends, aren’t you?”

Sylvain stares down at the little tear-drop shaped seed in his handkerchief, barely registering his father’s words. When had he been in the gardens last? And this time of year, there wouldn’t be any new seeds out. Planting was long finished by now. How long was he carrying this around for?

“Sylvain!”

He snaps his head up to see his father frowning impatiently. Sylvain tucks away the seed.

“Uh, right. Sorry. Yeah, I’ll get right on that. I was just writing In—my friends, anyway.”

_Ingrid_. He should tell her about Charon – if Gautier sends them aid, she can ask Charon to help Galatea too.

Or…

He takes the letter to Charon off the desk.

“I’ll write Felix right now and let him know I – we need him to fight off Sreng. I can bring your orders, too, since I’ll be passing all these off to the messengers anyway.”

_Please let this work._

Margrave Gautier stares down his son for a heavy moment, eyes narrowed and assessing. Sylvain resists the urge to smile, knowing his father would see through it in a heartbeat. All he can do is offer silent prayers to a Goddess he isn’t sure exists.

Maybe she answers. Maybe Sylvain is a better actor than Felix gives him credit for.

“Here. Be sure you pass this off to a military runner – our normal couriers are too slow for direct commands.”

“Of course, Father.”

He bows and backs away to the door, clutching the letters close to his chest. That reflexive smile breaks out now against the unimpressed look his father has plastered on his face. (To be fair, resting bitch face is the defining trait of House Gautier. Miklan had it too. Sylvain’s lucky that one lost out in the long list of terrible Gautier traits he inherited.)

His back hits the heavy door. The iron handle is cold against his palm.

“We’re all looking to you, Sylvain,” his father says as Sylvain tugs the door open. “Don’t let Gautier down.”

“Right. Of course, sir. I… I’ll be going, now.” They hold each other’s gaze all through his exit, only breaking when the closing door cuts between them.

Sylvain sighs. The air in the hall is far less oppressive than in the tight office. Still, he feels the weight of those words on his shoulders. _Don’t let Gautier down._

“And what about the other way around?”

There’s time to stew in that later, though. Right now, he has a few orders to rewrite, and a marriage proposal to burn.

The weeks leading up to the Sreng interception are marked by messengers rather than days. Ingrid’s letter comes first, a quick and discrete thanks to Sylvain. Hard to tell if her shortness is irritation with his father for treating her territory’s safety as another political game, or fear his father might see her words and realize where Sylvain really sent those soldiers.

Either way, Sylvain takes the unspoken message for what it is. Galatea received their aid.

Besides, Sylvain has plenty of anger for the both of them. He has to keep choking it down, lest he spit it out onto his father’s desk like the sunflower seed still tucked in his handkerchief.

Writing Felix isn’t nearly as easy. 

He wastes a swathe of paper and ink penning and repenning his request. It’s ridiculous, considering how little Felix cares for minced words and flowery greetings, but then, that’s the problem. Sylvain doesn’t have it in him to be brief. Ingrid was only half teasing when she called his summer letters novellas – writing has always drawn the most out of him.

He doubts Felix has time to read anything other than military orders these days. Knows he wouldn’t bother even if he did.

With an exasperated huff, Sylvain balls up another aborted letter and tosses it into the bin.

There’s a knock at the door.

Sylvain answers and finds Giselle. Greets her with the standard compliment, gets a monotone one in return. Wonders idly if he’s bored enough to turn two romps into three, but then she presents a letter.

The seal is a soft blue, marked with a crooked signet of House Gaspard.

Sylvain takes it wordlessly. Giselle leaves him for his father, a second blue sealed letter in hand.

The seal crumbles, like it wasn’t set right when it was made. It sets Sylvain’s stomach churning. Ashe’s looping script is off as well, cramped and cluttered even though his message takes barely a third of the page. Some parts are almost too smashed together to make out, while other words stand obvious as his eyes dart over the page. _Mobs in the streets. Rioting. Evacuating castle staff. Squadrons pulled back. Retreat to Fhirdiad._

_You may not hear from me for some time. I’ll trust in the Goddess to keep us all safe._

Simply signed with a hasty _-Ʌshe_. The _A_ isn’t even crossed.

Sylvain stares at that unfinished letter until he feels he’s going to vomit.

He writes Felix that night, unable to find the right words but suddenly afraid he’ll lose the chance to say them.

He hopes Felix is okay.

The missive from Rowe comes the next day. Not a fall, but a rebellion. Civil war.

Arianrhod falls within two weeks.

That’s enough to make Felix write him back.

_I’ll join you in Sreng_ , he writes. _My old man plans on Tailtean._

Two neat lines in elegant, formal script. A swathe of blank space, so much so that Sylvain nearly misses the signature. Three little words before Felix’s name.

_Keep yourself alive._

_-Felix Hugo Fraldarius_

Sylvain tucks the letter in his bag beside Egil’s feathers. It reminds him to breathe.

Three weeks pass, and a blizzard rolls in and claims the roads. It pushes back the Srengi forces, smart enough to know the ice is friend to no one. Sylvain paces and reads, takes tea with his mother, and aches for news. The southern messengers refuse to brave Itha in these storms; anything from Fraldarius or Galatea has to route through Fhirdiad.

The capital messengers stopped coming a week before the storm.

Something’s happening. He feels it in the held breath of winter, the tension that lives in the air. The horses sense it; they flinch every time he opens the stable door. Even Manette, who never shies from the snow, nips at his ears and protests against taking her bit every time Sylvain tries to take her out.

This storm is more than ice and snow. With a sinking feeling in his gut, Sylvain can’t help but think they won’t recognize the land once it passes overhead.

The figure crests Gautier Manor’s nearest hill while Sylvain is tugging his furs tighter around him outside the stable. At first he thinks it’s a trick of the wind, a cluster of snow blown in just the right pattern. A whinny carries on the wind, not from the stables behind him, but ahead.

Then he sees the bold blue of the kingdom’s colors flapping in the wind.

Sylvain clings to his cloak and pushes against the gale. The messenger horse kicks through snow drifts running as high as her knees, until the rider calls out something lost to the wind and dismounts. He pulls his message free from the bag, then kicks and stumbles the rest of the way to crash into Sylvain at the foot of the hill.

“Woah there,” Sylvain catches him by the shoulders before he can topple into the snow. He has to shout over the howl of the storm. “Are you alright?”

“Prin- Prince Dimitri,” the messenger gasps. Sylvain’s stomach freezes over. “His highness has been sentenced – for treason – an execution. I’m so sorry my lord – we were caught in the storm.”

Sylvain snatches the letter from his hand and rips through the seal. Snow soaks the page as he devours the neat and formal writing. Assassination plots, the regent. Private execution. A date. Sylvain can’t tear his eyes away from the date.

“We pressed as hard as we could, my lord. I’m so sorry.”

“ _Mitya_ …”

Curling blue ink and royal-worthy parchment spell out their future, now past. Lady Cornelia has ascended to the throne. The Kingdom surrendered to the Imperial army.

Dimitri has been dead for three days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes, for the curious:   
> -Egil means respect, as well as horror. Manette means sea of bitterness. These felt fitting for Ingrid and Sylvain's mounts.  
> -I stole the slur 'Imp' to refer to the Imperial Army from the game Valkyria Chronicles. Definitely a fun play if you're interested - it's similar to Fire Emblem's battle structure. 
> 
> Find me on twitter [@maplmoosemuffin](https://twitter.com/maplmoosemuffin)!

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on twitter [@maplmoosemuffin](https://twitter.com/maplmoosemuffin)!


End file.
